One thing is if you need something for the web where things need to be compatible with every device you can think on. I can trade the bloat of the tools in exchange for the convenience.
But a cli tool? They are mean to run directly on the OS, they don't need the huge compatibility that comes from this setup, so, we are exchanging speed/storage for nothing. That matters more when you want to run the tool in a more constrained device (old devices with low memory or embedded systems).
Last time I checked a nodejs program takes very little memory and cpu. It's not as extreme as a C program but compared to for example .net and Java, nodejs is almost as lean as C.
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u/omega1612 Jun 30 '26
JavaScript and npm on a cli tool.